CREBA pledges 500,000 housing units

The Chamber of Real Estate and Builders Associations (CREBA) has pledged to the Arroyo administration the delivery of about half a million housing units to help solve the country’s housing shortage.

CREBA, the industry’s largest organization of developers, builders, planners, manufacturers and suppliers, and professionals in different fields, made the pledge at the opening program for the observance of National Shelter Month at the House of Representatives.

Florentino S. Dulalia Jr., CREBA national president, speaking at the program, said under the organization’s Housing Finance Program, with the government’s support and implementation, homelessness and squatting will be licked.

Dulalia said CREBA will present the formal resolution of commitment on the delivery of housing units to President Arroyo during the joint 2002 National Convention of the CREBA and the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) on the theme "Alliances and Unity: The Key to Economic Recovery" in Baguio City on Oct. 9-11.

Mrs. Arroyo has been invited to be the convention keynote speaker. In her recent State of Nation Address, President Arroyo has identified housing as one of her priority programs for the masses. Since last month, CREBA and HUDCC had been urging other industry associations to join the pledging session and commit their own contributions to the housing program.

The country’s backlog of housing units is estimated at 4.5 million units, with a yearly increase of some 280,000 units. The yearly volume of housing production required to wipe out the shortage, including the annual increase of homeless families, is placed at some 500,000 units. Housing production for the next 20 years will need the conversion of some 10,000 hectares into residential and urban land.

Dulalia thanked House Speaker Jose de Venecia, Rep. Prospero C. Nograles, chairman of the committee on housing and urban development, and the entire House membership for approving the bill establishing the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which embodies CREBA’s housing finance provisions. The President had certified to the urgency of the measure which was endorsed for enactment by HUDCC. Dulalia especially thanked Rep. Eduardo C. Zialcita, the bill's principal author.

As part of the opening program, the CREBA Social Housing Foundation led by its president Demetrio Posadas began on the House of Representatives ground the construction of a modular housing unit to showcase the latest housing technology designed to reduce production time and shelter delivery. Nograles and members of the committee on housing and guests viewed the framing process and completed housing unit.

"We in CREBA," Dulalia stressed, "have every reason to hope that with the provisions on availability of affordable credit to homebuyers, the government’s housing program will succeed in delivering decent and affordable housing units to the homeless."